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It is no wonder that readers anticipated with regret the dissolution of a society that had provided them with so much delicate entertainment. Admirably as the club was designed for maintaining that variety of treatment on which Mr. Trusty comments in the letter quoted above, the execution of the design is deserving of ...
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Addison's own papers were 274 in number, as against 236 contributed by Steele. They were, as a rule, signed with one of the four letters C. L. I. O., either because, as Tickell seems to hint in his _Elegy_, they composed the name of one of the Muses, or, as later scholars have conjectured, because they were respectivel...
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The sale of the _Spectator_ was doubtless very large relatively to the number of readers in Queen Anne's reign. Johnson, indeed, computes the number sold daily to have been only sixteen hundred and eighty, but he seems to have overlooked what Addison himself says on the subject very shortly after the paper had been sta...
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Nothing could have been better timed than the appearance of the _Spectator_; it may indeed be doubted whether it could have been produced with success at any other period. Had it been projected earlier, while Addison was still in office, his thoughts would have been diverted to other subjects, and he would have been un...
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It is a peculiarity in Addison's life that Fortune, as if conspiring with the happiness of his genius, constantly furnished him with favourable opportunities for the exercise of his powers. The pension granted him by Halifax enabled him, while he was yet a young man, to add to his knowledge of classical literature an i...
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Addison had not the genius of a dramatist. The grace, the irony, the fastidious refinement which give him such an unrivalled capacity in describing and criticising the humours of men as a _spectator_ did not qualify him for imaginative sympathy with their actions and passions. But, like most men of ability in that peri...
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Undoubtedly, Pope was right in principle, and anybody who reads the thirty-ninth paper in the _Spectator_ may see not only that Addison was out of sympathy with the traditions of the English stage, but that his whole turn of thought disqualified him from comprehending the motives of dramatic composition. "The modern dr...
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It is, however, by no means undeserved in its application to the class of plays which grew up after the Restoration. Under that _régime_ the moral spirit of the Shakesperian drama entirely disappears. The king, whose temper was averse to tragedy, and whose taste had been formed on French models, desired to see every pl...
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At the same time, the taste of the nation having been once turned into French channels, a remedy for these defects was naturally sought for from French sources; and just as the school of Racine and Boileau set its face against the extravagances of the romantic coteries, so Addison and his English followers, adopting th...
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This habit of thought, useful as an antidote to extravagance, was not fertile as a motive of dramatic production. Addison worked with strict and conscious attention to his critical principles: the consequence is that his _Cato_, though superficially "correct," is a passionless and mechanical play. He had combated with ...
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"Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move The hero's glory or the virgin's love; In pitying love we but our weakness show, And wild ambition well deserves its woe. Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause, Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws: He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise, And calls for...
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A falling state offers a tragic spectacle to the thought and the reason, but not one that can be represented on the stage so as to move the passions of the spectators. The character of Cato, as exhibited by Addison, is an abstraction, round which a number of other lay figures are skilfully grouped for the delivery of l...
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"About things," he observes, "on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right; and of _Cato_ it has not been unjustly determined that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any state p...
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To this it may be added that, from the essentially undramatic bent of Addison's genius, whenever he contrives a train of incident he manages to make it a little absurd. Dennis has pointed out with considerable humour the consequences of his conscientious adherence to the unity of place, whereby every species of action ...
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The deficiencies of _Cato_ as an acting play were, however, more than counterbalanced by the violence of party spirit, which insisted on investing the comparatively tame sentiments assigned to the Roman champions of liberty with a pointed modern application. In 1713 the rage of the contending factions was at its highes...
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On the 13th of April the play was ready for performance, and contemporary accounts give a vivid picture of the eagerness of the public, the excitement of parties, and the apprehensions of the author. "On our first night of acting it," says Cibber, in his Apology, speaking of the subsequent representation at Oxford, "ou...
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"Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible had been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author said of another may the most properly be applied to him on this occasion:
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The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other, while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than the head. This was the case, too, with the Prologue-writer, who was clapped into ...
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The Queen herself partook, or feigned to partake, of the general enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that the play should be dedicated to her. This honour had, however, been already designed by the poet for the Duchess of Marlborough, so that, finding himself unable under the circumstances to fulfil his intentions, he dec...
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The fame of _Cato_ spread from England to the Continent. It was twice translated into Italian, twice into French, and once into Latin; a French and a German imitation of it were also published. Voltaire, to whom Shakespeare appeared no better than an inspired barbarian, praises it in the highest terms. "_The first Engl...
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There were, of course, not wanting voices of detraction. A graduate of Oxford attacked _Cato_ in a pamphlet entitled _Mr. Addison turned Tory_, in which the party spirit of the play was censured. Dr. Sewell, a well-known physician of the day--afterwards satirised by Pope as "Sanguine Sewell"--undertook Addison's defenc...
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"Believe me, prince, there's not an African That traverses our vast Numidian deserts In quest of prey, and lives upon his bow, But better practises these boasted virtues. Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chase; Amidst the running streams he slakes his thirst, Toils all the day, and at th' approach of night On t...
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But in all those parts of the poem where action and not ornament is demanded, we seem to perceive the work of a poet who was constantly thinking of what his characters ought to say in the situation, rather than of one who was actually living with them in the situation itself. Take Sempronius' speech to Syphax, describi...
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"Remember, Syphax, we must work in haste: Oh think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots and their last fatal period. Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Filled up with horror all, and big with death! Destruction hangs on every word we speak, On every thought, till the concluding stroke Determines all,...
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"Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an ...
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